One question prompts another. Why did they expect him to be an earthly king? Here is the real root of the matter. Because man always thinks that all that matters is his earthly lot. That's why they were expecting the wrong thing. Man always thinks earthly wise. His thoughts are always limited to his fortunes on earth. So that even many well-meaning people in those days like the disciples would say to themselves, ‘Well, if the Lord is coming, then naturally the only reason we can imagine him coming is to help us and to advance the prospects of Israel, and to help us get rid of the Romans and to help us achieve wealth and prosperity, to help us to lift up our heads and be a proud nation once again. The idea that he would come in order to save the souls of men was almost the last thing that occurred to them.
There's one other reason why we are so slow to understand these things. Maybe someone explains these things to you and you have never heard them explained before. It wouldn't be even a bit surprising if what you understand today has gone from you a week from now. Here is a great mystery, but it is a plain fact, and this is what the Scripture teaches: that though these things are very simple, somehow the human mind finds it so hard to understand them that it can't hold on to them for very long. It is the amazing nature of spiritual things. While I am a rebel against God, and while I don't want to be converted or to seek him, I can even have Calvary spelled as simply as possible, and I will see it just for a glimpse, and then it's gone again. ‘The natural man’, says the Scripture, ‘receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God.’ If you really begin to understand these things, if you really begin to understand Gethsemane, Calvary, the burial and the resurrection, it can only be because the Lord is graciously working in your heart, showing you your need of a Saviour, showing you the way of salvation, drawing you to himself. If these things begin to dawn clearly on your mind and you understand what they mean; if they weigh on your heart, and you to wish that you had spiritual life, and you begin to feel that you are a sinner as the Bible says you are, and that your heart is deceitful, and that you are out for yourself and for this world, then the Spirit of God may well be at work in your heart.